Facebook Spam Issue and Workarounds

I have found some saviors that told me how to get myself unmarked as Spam!! I don’t know that it works for everyone but for me it did! It seems that Facebook has marked some affiliate programs as ‘spam’ and if you advertise them on your blog site, you then will be marked spam in the eyes of Facebook as well. I happened to be advertising one of those sites. As soon as I took it down, waalaa, I was free again! At first when I tried to post, I had to use captcha…but that’s much better than getting the awful spam message!

I don’t want to tell you to not advertise this site but for me it was worth taking it down in order to be not considered spam anymore. If you are considered spam and would like to know which site it is, email me through my contact page. I also want to clarify that this site is not even a bad site! It’s a site that you all buy through on a regular basis…why Facebook considers it spam is beyond me!!

However, having said all of that, I still believe that we should still take measures to have a back up plan in case Facebook decides to take us out. I have seen Facebook pull power plays way too often and completely ban people from their pages. I don’t ever want that to happen to me. If that does, I hope that you would already have Bookmarked Slopswap.com, have already Followed Slop Swap via Twitter, and have already Subscribed to Slop Slop via email. As a matter of fact, as I type this, Facebook is down and I can’t even log in.

So hopefully you all can start sharing Slop Swap posts again too without getting that awful spam message! Please know that none of my posts would ever contain spam or abusive type material and I would never ever put anything on my site that would contain anything like that either!

Spam

No, I’m not talking about that kind of spam. I wish I was. If you haven’t heard the buzz around Facebook, a lot of blog pages in the couponing community have been marked ‘spam’ on Facebook. What does that mean?

Well it means that if you try to share Slop Swap posts, you will get a message that looks like this:

or this:

Really? My posts are abusive and spammy? I’m pretty sure that I’ve never posted anything that is abusive or spammy but again, I am not the only blog that this has happened to. In fact, in the back of my mind I knew it was probably only a matter of time before it happened to my site too. I have heard that it’s not just the couponing community that this is happening too – it’s other businesses as well.

I’m not sure why this is happening but there is a lot of different speculation out there. One thought is that when fans ‘like’ our pages, they later decide that it’s not for them. That’s completely fine. I don’t want to force anyone to be a fan of my page if they don’t want to be. If that’s the case, they should simply return to my fanpage and click the ‘unlike’ button. Simple as that. Instead what they are doing is clicking the ‘x’ on a post and then clicking the ‘spam’ button. Each time that happens it gets registered. Once that total reaches a certain number, the page gets marked spam.

As far as I know, there isn’t a way to un-mark your page once it is marked as spam – or if Facebook is willing to un-mark them. There is a group on Facebook that has been started called We Are Not Spam that is trying to go to Facebook to see if they will remove the spam flags but until then I need to come up with some workarounds.

Workarounds

Thanks to some encouragement from my wonderful blogger friends, my fans and a great program called HootSuite, I now have a way to re-share my own posts to Facebook. I can still post from my blog to Facebook and if I want to re-share something that I posted before, I use HootSuite. Granted the main source of information is the blog site but with so many of you on Facebook, it would be like cutting off my main source of communication if I couldn’t post. And to be honest, I’m pretty stubborn and though I had thoughts of throwing in the towel, that would be like letting whoever did this win….and I can’t do that! On top of that, you all have signed up, followed and supported me and I can’t give up on you!!

I’m going to continue to post on my blog and to Facebook where most of you are but here are some workarounds for you:

Subscribe to Slop Slop via email – this is the best way to never miss a deal! Facebook can not block my posts here. When you sign up, you will get an email asking you to confirm…don’t forget to actually click on that email or your subscription will not be active.

Follow Slop Swap via Twitter - all my posts automatically post to twitter! Facebook can not block my posts here AND you can also re-tweet my posts to your friends. So if you’re finding that you want to share a coupon with your friends but you can’t on Facebook – you CAN on twitter!

Bookmark Slopswap.com – check the blog regularly. Never hurts to just check the blog and see what posts you might have missed, get a refresher or look in the back logs. Also, if you love the blog, your friends might too…email them the site.

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Comments

My comments are working again…for the most part. Just can’t get commentluv to work for my own page! :/ Otherwise, comments are up and hopefully spammers shouldn’t be able to find us! Thanks to those who notified me it was down!

Hello…thanks for linking up in the Footloose and Fancy Free Hop…I’ve come to return the love. Your post above on Facebook. I had trouble posting to mine a couple of times, but then it stopped showing me that ungodly message. It’s very irritating not to be able to use our page as they are designed to be. Make it a great week!

This has been happening lately to me also! I used to use Networked Blogs to syndicate and I’ve had to start doing it again in order to get my posts to be able to show up on my wall again. I’ve notified FB each time about it, but nothing yet…

I’ve started using Hootsuite to post and I actually really like it because you can schedule posts to go out, etc. You also have to have a plug in to add links to FB but it still bothers me that I have this black mark on me that I’m considered a spammer. I know my current FB readers understand what happened but what will new readers think?! We’ll just keep reporting to FB and hopefully we’ll get it reversed.

-Ask your fans not to click the “x” if they want to unlike you;
-Instead, let them click only the UNLIKE button.
-However, if they have reported your page as spam already, I believe there’s an UNDO button to unmark the spam report.

P.S.

I am trying to follow you via GFC but it doesn’t work. I guess something is wrong with your codes.

My GFC only works some of the time and from my ‘home’ page. I looked up the issue and it seems a like a lot of blogs have this issue. I tried to find a code to fix it but it still only works part of the time…but usually from the home page. It’s frustrating. :/ I didn’t get an email from you…another one of those things not working on my page. grrr. Try emailing me at slopswap @ gmail dot com Thanks!!

HI! I found you on Terri’s Little Haven’s Alexa Hop.
Commenting to help you lower your alexa! Please comment back and help me lower mine too!
I have a TON of giveaways right now in my July Archive on the right sidebar for some really great prizes, and way more coming soon too. If you have any you want to add to my linky, just click the tiger picture on the left sidebar underneath my top 3 popular posts! It will take you to my linky list! If you have a linky compilation feel free to add it.
Anyway, besides all of that, just please comment back to help me lower mine. I have noticed a lot of people don’t comment back, and you know, those ppl shouldnt add their names to alexa hop lists! Thanks!
Have a great day and just say no to blocked captcha!

I haven’t had that to happen to any of my blogs yet, but my postings to my own fan pages get moderated from time to time, which is painfully annoying since I have to type in certain letters to make sure I’m not a spam robot. I feel like if people don’t like being a fan of my sites that they should simply unfan themselves instead of making it hard for sites to have a fan page on FB.

Facebook has been such a pain lately =/ Sometimes I can tag other pages and sometimes I can’t. They hide posts from others on my wall in “hidden posts” which I forget to check =/ I just never know from day to day what I’ll be able to do =/

I had seen several pages using the hootsuite now I know why =)

I’m a day late from the Make your Rank lower Monday Alexa hop =/ I’m kind of new to Alexa so my alexa needs a whole lot of help haha I seem to only have had one visit so maybe I’m not the only one that forgot =/ which of course makes me feel a little better haha =) Have a great night! =)

Facebook – can’t live with it, can’t live without it! Thanks for your comments!! I also have an Alexa hop if you’d like to link up to that. It’s a Friday hop so you can come check back this Friday if you want to start fresh. It’s a little newer but it’s starting to take off. I’ll come visit your page too! I tend to get wrapped up and forget to go back to the hops so I try to visit the one before me for sure on the day I link up…and then of coarse I always follow back!!

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